


No Place In The World Left To Go

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [307]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU in Which Tony Invents the Super Soldier Serum, And the Allies Are Losing, Angst, Feelings, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, M/M, Major Character Injury, Rough Sex, Sharing a Bed, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20522267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They’re at a flophouse in Rome, a hotel so rundown that no fleas would set down their bags, and Tony’s tired, fuck, is he. The kind of tired that only scotch on the rocks, keep ‘em coming and an icy blonde with a nice rack can fix.





	No Place In The World Left To Go

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Cheap hotel.
> 
> Hey, hey: mind the warnings and tags here, folks.

They’re at a flophouse in Rome, a hotel so rundown that no fleas would set down their bags, and Tony’s tired, fuck, is he. The kind of tired that only scotch on the rocks, keep ‘em coming and an icy blonde with a nice rack can fix.

But there’s no blonde here. There’s only Bucky, a roughshod sergeant with dirt from the forests of France under his fingernails, still. They’ve been in Italy almost a week.

Which is why when the sergeant turns from the window and pulls off his shirt, the view is pretty but also rank.

“Need a bath,” Barnes grunts. “I saw taps down the hall.”

Tony waves his hand and doesn’t bother to raise his head from the bed. “Sally forth, then, soldier, and be clean.”

Bucky takes the view with him. But sadly not the smell: sweat and blood and something else, something even more pungent. Tony takes it in, lets it out, sticks it. Ah yes, he thinks, weary. That’s grief.

Steve Rogers, the Allies’ last great hope, had been dead for a fortnight, as the Brits say. 14 days, two weeks--whatever way you slice it, he’s dead and now Hitler’s winning the race. It was a propaganda boon. It still is. Tony’s gut says it might be enough to carry Germany to the finish line. There’s the Manhattan thing back at home, but the boys there have been too goddamn slow, and who’s fault is that, now? Not Tony’s. They’d booted him out of their secret club a few years before.

He isn’t bitter about that anymore. Mostly.

He’d loaned himself out to Churchill’s men and that had been a better fit for a while; they’d seen his value, the British, and given him money to play with and men, so many men eager to do what they could for Old Blighty and for Tony, eventually. They fell easy for him, those Englishmen, happy to spread their cheeks for the cause because they all wanted to be chosen as the world’s first Super Soldier: rich men and poor ones, Scottish and Irish and Welsh, each ready to pay for the privilege if necessary and oh, Tony was damn good at convincing them that it was.

But in the end, it hadn’t been his call after all. No, Winston had phoned his friend Franklin and the president had send his choice across the ocean and delivered him to Tony’s front door.

“Hi,” the kid had said, confident despite the skinny legs and big ears. “I’m Steve Rogers, sir. You must be Mr. Stark.”

“What the fuck,” Tony had said through a head full of hangover. “_You’re _ Steve Rogers?”

That’d only made the guy stand up straighter. “Yep. Mr. Roosevelt sent me, sir. I was told you’d be expecting me.”

“Expecting, yes. You? Pffft.” Tony had turned his back and wandered back into the cool dark of his lab. “Fuck no.”

It had taken a lot of convincing and a flurry of all-caps coded telegraphs, but in the end, Tony had gone with it and strapped the kid into his machine and made--if he did say so himself--a hell of a man with a chip on his shoulder when it came to Tony a fucking mile wide. But Tony liked that about him, liked that he was mouthy when the brass wasn’t around, liked that Steve had a bit of temper that even after the serum a little well-placed whiskey could bring out. 

“You,” Steve had hissed in his ear the first time Tony got fucked, bent over a workbench with screwdrivers biting his arms, “you are the bane of my existence, Stark.”

It was hard to sass with that thing in his ass, but he managed. “Then get the hell off me, asshole.”

Steve had laughed then, laughed and pulled Tony closer, squeezed his hips tighter. “No. I like screwing you too much.”

It was fun while it lasted, but then, of course, Steve had a job to do, didn’t he? To go and win a goddamn world war.

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Steve murmured that last night, his mouth pressed to the back of Tony’s neck. “You’re gonna miss me so much.”

They were in Tony’s bed and Steve was fucking him through it and Tony was crazy to come, dying for it, but Steve’s fist around the base of his dick was a _ bitch _.

Which was why he’d lied, whispered “I won’t” even though he knew that shit wouldn’t fly.

Steve nuzzled his throat and Steve slammed into him again and again and Steve didn’t make him take it back, didn’t call him on it, didn’t have to, so bald was the lie. And when Steve had come, he'd bitten the meat of Tony’s shoulder and howled and was still spurting when he'd open his fist and muttered “Come” and Tony'd gone firehose in the sheets and screamed for what felt like a week.

“Yeah,” Steve said when they were face to face again, when he was weaving his fingers through the mess on Tony’s stomach and Tony was panting like he’d just run the three-minute mile. “You will.”

*****

They hadn’t seen each other for years after that, not until 1944 when the Battle of the Bulge went south and with it, everybody knew, the Allies’ advantage. Russia had drained Hitler’s forces but the Bulge fiasco gave the Germans the victory they needed to get the homefront onboard with the war effort again.

Times were bad. Tony’s life, too. He hadn’t been able to get the serum to take in anyone after Steve and the Brits had taken his tech and booted him out. He was one wrong bottle of rum from sleeping on the goddamn street.

But then the telegram had come from a holdout area in France: SR WOUNDED. DOCTORS USELESS. COME. And then a set of coordinates, which he had chosen to ignore, because how the fuck was he going to zip across the channel while dodging Nazi arms? He'd comforted himself with bathtub gin and no ice. It was probably a prank, anyway.

In the morning, though, there’d been a knock--10 minutes worth, actually--delivered by a no-nonsense woman bearing Army boots and flak jacket.

“Put these on,” Captain Carter had said brusquely. “We’re crossing the channel in five hours. Tell me, do you have your own gun?”

“Do I--?” He’d blinked in the dusty sunlight she’d brought into his flat. “No.”

She crossed her arms and pointed at his pants, waited until he’d picked them up. “Well. You do know how to shoot at least, surely.”

“Not really.”

“Christ on a cracker. A word of advice, Mr. Stark: don’t repeat that to anyone. If asked, you’re a crack shot with your daddy’s pistol, which I shall provide, and you shall carry as if you know what the business end is for, hmm?”

It’d taken almost a full day to get from London to the middle of some fairytale forest in France where Steve Rogers, that bastard, was trying his damnedest to die. He was gray when Tony bent over him, gray and without that sharp, fuck you light in his eyes.

“Docs can’t do anything for him,” a dark-haired guy crouched by Steve’s head said. “They got the bullets out ok, but the wounds won’t close, even with real tight stitches.”

“Bucky threatened to nail ‘em shut,” Steve croaked.

“And I would have, too, if somebody hadn’t stolen my hammer.”

“Boys,” Tony’d said, easing back the blood-stained dressings. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Steve thought it might have something to do with the serum,” Captain Carter had said on the way over as the boat skipped silently through the waves. “He’s never been cut so deeply before, so he wasn’t sure if there’d been changes to his blood chemistry that might be interfering with the healing process.”

“Shouldn’t be,” he’d told her, repeated to himself again and again. “Not by design, anyway. But intent only gets you so far, huh?”

Now, staring down at the putrid mess that was Steve Rogers’ chest, all he could think of were the hours he’d spent with his head there after they’d worn each other out, after Steve’s steam had blown off and his own fuzzy, righteous anger at the universe had been temporarily pummeled away. For all the rough of their fucks, what followed was sweeter, more goddamn gentle, than Tony’d ever been with another man. Girls, they liked that sort of thing sometimes, to be coddled and cooed at before you booted them out, but the men in Tony’s life had always been of the fuck-and-run variety, and he’d been just peachy with that.

But Steve was a cuddler, a warm, overheated blanket once his balls were empty that wanted nothing more than for Tony to be tucked up in the lea of his arm, their mouths close. Sometimes, that kind of shit led to more sex, but a lot of times, it didn’t; there was just skin against skin and breath over breath and the soft slide of Tony’s fingers up and down the pretty valleys of Steve’s chest.

None of that was left; it’d all been blown to shit.

“Two bullets,” Barnes told him when they stepped away, leaving Captain Carter and the Commandos behind. “Point blank. Stevie never had a chance.”

“How the fuck did this happen?”

Bucky just blinked at him. “It’s war, Stark. Shit like this happens all the time. He turned his back, he got jumped, and now--”

“Now,” Tony said softly. “He’s dying.”

In the end, he figured it wasn’t the serum that was killing Steve, it was the only thing keeping him from dying, and wasn’t that the cruelest irony of them all, huh? The thing that’d made Steve a weapon in the first place had made him its last victim. It’d have been better if he was just a man, a mortal, whose heart wasn’t fueled to fight, whose body would have reached for peace and just let him die.

“It was a longshot, bringing you out here, Tone.” Steve’s fingers had been stiff and frozen in his. “I’m sorry you risked your life for nothing.”

“Pffft, nothing,” Tony said. He didn’t try to hide that he was crying. They all were. “Got to see your mug again, didn’t I?”

Steve had smiled at him, dry lips stretched. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone, won’t you?”

Tony kissed his forehead. “I have already, asshole. This whole fucking time.”

They’d buried him behind the barn where they’d been hiding. Barnes wouldn’t let them leave a cross, so Dugan and Happy built a bairn. 

And then there was nothing left of Steve Rogers, of the Super Soldier Project, and the war was getting closer. Tony could hear the German firing line.

“Well, gentlemen,” Captain Carter had said. “That’s it then, eh? Good luck to you.”

“Yeah,” Falsworth said, repositioning his cap. “Godspeed and all that.”

“Hey,” Barnes had said at Tony’s elbow, his eyes dark and his mouth set. “You’re with me.”

Tony startled. “Why?”

A shrug. “Because. Steve would’ve wanted it that way.”

*****  


Two weeks of running later and they're in fascist Italy, of all fucking places. It wasn’t much, but it was damn sure a step up from a country crawling with Nazis. Here, there was only an infestation and these were fat and happy, living it up on Il Duce’s hospitality.

“This is better,” Bucky had muttered as they crept through the night streets. “Believe me.”

“Does that mean you’ll let me sleep? for more than two hours at a stretch?"

Bucky’d chuckled and swept an arm around Tony’s waist, a counterweight to keep him upright. “We find an inn that’ll let us in, Joseph, and sure. Knock yourself out.”

But he isn’t sleeping, is he. He’s lying on a bed for the first time in what feels like a lifetime and he’s not asleep. No, he’s listening to the water run down the hall, the pipes creaking and banging, and imagining what Sergeant Barnes looks like with his clothes all stripped off.

He’s grieving and he’s exhausted and somehow, beyond all that, he can feel himself getting stiff.

He’s feeling too much, that’s all. The world is turning upside down and a man he might have loved, whose life he might have ruined, died right in front of him and there are flames flickering at the foundation of the person he was before and the promise of ashes doesn’t frighten him as much as it should. His body and his brain are just overwhelmed and they’re taking it out on his dick. If he just lies here still for a minute, just lies here and breathes, he won’t think about the fact that Steve’s eyes wouldn’t close or that he was still bleeding even after he stop bleeding or that no one beyond the circle who dug it will ever know the location of his grave. He won’t think about the fact that there’s only one bed in this hotbox, one bed and two bodies and how lovely Sergeant Barnes is, the way his voice sometimes hits the same notes as Steve’s. He won’t think about spreading his fingers over clean skin or about Bucky’s back bowing. He won’t think about how much he needs to be kissed. He won’t--

“Stark.” Bucky’s in the doorway down to his shorts. “Taps are free. You should use them.”

“Yeah?” Tony sits up. Too fast, it turns out. “Do I smell that bad?”

That almost-smile again. “Hell yes.”

He leaves his boots by the bed and strips fast in the bathroom. Bucky’s rinsed out his shirt and pants and hung them crooked on the towel bar. When Tony’s done, shivering in the draining tub, he drapes his over the side. There aren’t any towels. It doesn’t matter. They’re the only ones on the whole top floor.

Which means, he figure as he pads soggy down the hall, that if he can jimmy the lock, there’s no reason for them to share a room. No reason except, when he steps over the door jam, Bucky’s thrown back the sheets and opened the windows and is framed in one by the stars and flickering streetlights.

“Tony,” he says. “You should see this. C’mere.”

Outside, the streets are quiet. A few cars, a couple of horses, but if he looks out beyond, towards the horizon, Rome herself is dressed for high times. Victory. Il Duce can probably smell it. God knows Hitler can. Captain America’s disappeared from the scene and the jackboots are marching, marching, and soon, Britain will be in the Axis’s grip. As for the US, South America, the rest: it’s only a matter of time.

Bucky’s shoulder brushes his. “You think we can still pull this out?”

“No.” Tony tips his body until their skin touches again. “Fuck, no, kid. It’s all over now but the shouting.”

“That’s what I figured. I could see it Captain Carter’s face, you know? She never would have split us up otherwise.”

“You didn’t have to drag me along, you know. I’d, uh--I'd understand if you wanted to go your own way now that we’re out of France.”

Bucky turns his head. “Why would I do that?”

“Come on, Barnes. I have to be slowing you down.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“What?”

A hand on his face, worn and gentle. “Steve’s gone. I got no place in the world left to go.”

It’s only when Bucky’s lips meet his that Tony understands, like a kick to the gut: _Y__ou_, he thinks as Bucky’s thumb traces his jaw. _You loved him, too_.

In bed, Bucky’s slow, the kind of slow that makes Tony want to break apart, the kind that turns his body to sugar melted under the heat of Bucky’s mouth and his hands.

“Wish I could be inside you,” he mumbles as he straddles Tony’s hips and leans down to nuzzle his neck. “Wish I had some slick to get you stretched so I could feel you all around me, huh? I bet you get so tight when you come.”

Bucky's hair isn’t as long as Steve’s was back then. He's a lot skinnier--the war diet; his cock’s fatter and he moans so much sofer when he comes. But in the dark, in the growing chill of the coming dawn, it’s close enough that Tony’s heart blurs and then he opens his eyes and sees Bucky's grin, watches Bucky's eyes flutter when Tony's back arches and he gives it up and up and up and then Bucky's saying his name and kissing his face and it isn't ok that Steve's dead, fuck no, it isn't, but right then, as he kisses Bucky back, for the first time in a long time, it feels ok that he's alive.

“We’ll need to leave in the morning,” Bucky says. He’s strumming the lines of Tony’s ribs. “Not at first light or anything, but one night here is enough.”

Tony kisses the dip in Bucky’s chest. “Where we going? Got some place in mind?”

Dry lips on his cheek, the promise of something--what? “Nah. Some place different, hmm? That’s enough.”


End file.
